She instructed him to turn his back. She got out of the bed, stripped off the top sheet, and twisted it about herself as though it were a toga. As she sat at the table, she grinned at him. "I'm starving."
Such a waif. She charmed him.
He grinned back at her. What could have been the worst moment had passed without much strain. He put the food on the table and made a disparaging gesture to indicate his lack of culinary finesse.
"Everything looks delicious," she assured him. She reached for the main serving dish and began to heap food onto her plate. She did not speak again until she had finished eating.
She tried to help with the dishes, although she soon tired and had to retreat to the bed. When he had finished and sat in the straight-backed chair beside her, she said, "What do you do?"
He shrugged.
"For a living, I mean."
He thought of his hands, wondered how he possibly could have told her about them even if he had been able to talk. He shrugged as if to say, Nothing much.
She looked around the shabby room. "Panhandling" When he did not respond, she decided that she'd hit on it. "How long can I stay here?"
By gesture, expression, and pantomime, Ollie made her understand that she could stay as long as she liked.
When this was clear, she studied him a long moment and finally said, "Could we have less light?"
He got up and switched off two of the three lamps. When he turned to her again, she was lying nude on top of the covers, her legs slightly spread to receive him.
"Look," she said, "I figure you didn't bring me here and nurse me back to health for nothing. You know? You expect a… reward. And you have a right to expect one."
Confused, frustrated, he got clean sheets from a stack in the corner and, ignoring her offer, proceeded to change the bed under her without once touching her. She stared at him in disbelief, and when he was done, she said that she didn't want to sleep. He insisted. He touched her and put her out for the night.
In the morning, she ate breakfast with the greedy efficiency that she had shown at dinner the night before, wasting nothing, then asked if she could take a bath. He washed dishes while her sweet voice came through the bathroom door, singing a lovely melodic song that he had never heard before.
She came out of her bath with clean hair as dark as burnt honey, stood nude at the foot of the bed, and beckoned to him. Already she seemed sleeker, healthier than when he had found her, though she was still leaner than she needed to be.
She said, "I was so stupid last night. My hair was a dirty mess and my body odor would've turned off a bull. Now I'm soapy-smelling."
Ollie turned away from her and stared at the few dishes that he still had to dry.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
He had no reply.
"You don't want me?"
He shook his head—No.
She drew a sudden deep breath.
Something struck him painfully on the hip. Turning, he saw that the girl was wielding a heavy glass ashtray. Drawing her lips back from her teeth, she hissed at him as though she were an angry cat. She pounded his shoulders with the ashtray, struck him repeatedly with one tiny balled fist, kicked, and screeched. Then she lost her grip on the ashtray and sagged against him, exhausted, crying.
He put his arm around her to comfort her, but she had enough energy to twist violently away. She turned, tried to reach the bed, stumbled, fell, and passed out.
He lifted her and put her to bed.
He pulled the covers around her, tucked her in, and sat down in his chair to wait for her to regain consciousness.
When she awakened half an hour later, she was trembling and dizzy. He soothed her, smoothing her hair away from her face, wiping her teary eyes, placing cold compresses on her brow.
In time, when she could speak, she asked, "Are you impotent or something?"
He shook his head.
"Then why? I wanted to repay you. That's how I repay men. I don't have anything else to give."
He touched her. Held her. With his expression and with his clumsy pantomime he tried to make her understand that she had a great deal to give. She was giving just by being here. Just by being here.
That afternoon, he went out to buy her pajamas, street clothes, and a newspaper. She was amused by his chaste choice of pajamas: full-sleeved, long-legged flannels. She put them on, then read the newspaper to him — comics and human-interest stories. She seemed to think that he couldn't read, and he was willing to play along with the misconception, since his illiteracy tended to reinforce his cover: Winos didn't collect books.
Besides, he liked to listen to her read. Her voice was sweet.
The following morning, Annie dressed in her new blue jeans and sweater to accompany Ollie to the corner grocery store, although he tried to dissuade her. At the register, when he handed a nonexistent twenty-dollar bill to the cashier and collected change, he thought that Annie was looking elsewhere.
Outside, however, as they walked home, she said, "How'd you do that?"
He feigned perplexity. Do what?
"Don't try to fool Annie," she said. "I almost croaked when he grabbed a handful of air and gave change."
He said nothing.
"Hypnotism?" she pressed.
Relieved, he nodded — Yes.
"You'll have to teach me."
He didn't reply.
But she was not going to be put off. "You have to teach me how you conned that guy. With that little trick I wouldn't need to hustle my body any more, you know? Christ, he smiled at that handful of air! How? How? Teach me! You've got to!"
Finally, at home, unable to tolerate her persistent pleading any longer, afraid that he would be foolish enough to tell her about his hands, Ollie shoved her away from him. The back of her knees caught the bed, and she sat down hard, surprised by his sudden anger.
She said no more, and their relationship returned to an easier pitch. But everything had changed.
Since she couldn't nag him about learning the con game, she had time to think. Late in the evening, she said, "I had my last fix days ago, but I don't feel any need for drugs. I haven't been this long without the crap in at least five years."
Ollie held his guilty hands out to his sides to indicate his own puzzlement.
"Did you throw away my tools, the skag?"
He nodded.
A while later, she said, "The reason I don't need dope… is it you, something you did? Did you hypnotize me and make me not want it?" When he nodded, she said, "The same way you made the clerk see the twenty-dollar bill?"
He agreed, using his fingers and eyes to do a comic imitation of a stage hypnotist hamming it up for an audience.
"Not hypnotism at all," she said, fixing him with her piercing eyes, seeing through his facade as no one had done in years. "ESP?"
What's that? he asked with gestures.
"You know," Annie said. "You know."
She was a more observant girl, a much brighter girl than he had thought.
She began to nag again, but not about the con game any longer. "Come on! Really, what's it like? How long have you had it, this power, this gift? Don't be ashamed of it! It's wonderful! You should be proud! You have the world on a string!"
And so on.
Sometime during the long night — later, Ollie could never recall the precise moment or understand what single telling argument she used to finally break him down — he agreed to show her what he could do. He was nervous, wiping his magical hands on his shirt. He was excited about showing her his abilities, felt like a young boy trying to impress his first date — but he also feared the consequences.
First he handed her a nonexistent twenty-dollar bill, made her see it, and then made it disappear. Then, with a dramatic wave of his hand, he levitated a coffee cup (empty), a coffee cup (filled), the straight-backed chair, a lamp, the bed (empty), the bed (with Annie in it), and finally himself, floating off the floor as though he were an Indian fakir. The girl whooped and hollered with delight. She persuaded him to give her a ride around the room on a broomstick of air. She hugged him, kissed him, asked for more tricks. He turned on the water in the sink without touching the faucet, divided the stream into two streams that fell on both sides of the drain. He let her throw a cup of water at him and diverted it in a hundred different sprays, keeping himself dry.